


Waiting

by xpityx



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Selfishness, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 17:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19480906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Eve tried to be grateful that, up to this point in her life, she had been blissfully unaware that there was a sensation that was a mixture of agonising pain and souped-up itching powder. She’d been in hospital for a week and, from the vague replies she got whenever she asked the question, she had at least another week to go. Thankfully she’d been repatriated under some obscure MI6 HR policy, as she’d certainly not thought to buy her own travel insurance.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to SlumberousTrash for catching my many errors

Eve tried to be grateful that, up to this point in her life, she had been blissfully unaware that there was a sensation that was a mixture of agonising pain and souped-up itching powder. She’d been in hospital for a week and, from the vague replies she got whenever she asked the question, she had at least another week to go. Thankfully she’d been repatriated under some obscure MI6 HR policy, as she’d certainly not thought to buy her own travel insurance. 

The last occupant of her hospital bed had left a three-year out-of-date copy of Cosmopolitan in the side table. She’d wiped it down with some alcohol gel in case it had syphilis, then made careful notes in the margins of the mindfulness article. 

_I will be in the moment_ , she told herself when she turned over and the sour smell of her wound billowed up from under the cheap cotton covers.

_Conscious breathing is my anchor_ , was her mantra whenever Carolyn turned up to go over her statement. 

Kenny had brought her a huge bunch of flowers in the first few days—when she’d still been groggy from the sedative they’d used when she’d been flown home. He hadn’t looked at her, hadn’t said a word, had just bought them in and put them next to her before leaving again. She hoped he stopped being mad at her at some point: Hugo was useless with the technology side of things. 

She wasn’t sure when she’d decided she was going back to MI6, but Carolyn hadn’t even missed a beat when Eve had asked her about her office and the status of her team (Hugo: alive and no, not in the same hospital; Jess: in labour and equally, not in the same hospital). Two days later she’d gotten a call from HR to inform her that, although she had technically been shot in the line of duty, she had not been working in her current position long enough to accrue any significant amount of sick pay. She’d yet to look up exactly how much statutory sick pay was. 

She was waiting for Niko to visit. Once Niko had visited, she’d be a responsible adult and look up how broke she was going to be for the next four months or so, but until then she was going to re-read Cosmo for the sixteenth time. She’d had a mostly sane conversation with her mother two days ago where she’d read the official story she’d been given via email: mugging in Rome, stabbed not shot. Her mother had cried, she’d cried—though possibly for different reasons. She’d had to lie and say that Niko had just popped out to get her some food. Her parents loved him. 

There had been no question in her mind that he would visit, but after a week she was starting to get annoyed. Surely serious injury trumped minor marital issues? 

_Feelings come and go like the clouds_ , she thought, whenever her mind slipped to Villanelle; to Hugo begging her to stay; to the wet sound of an axe separating flesh and muscle. 

She’d seen Carolyn three times since she’d arrived in London, and she was not expecting another visit when she arrived late that evening. She wore a deep red dress and matching shoes that looked like they had cost more than four months of sick pay. Eve just watched her in silence as she leaned on the edge of a side table: they’d moved past small talk some time ago.

“I probably should have mentioned this before, but Niko was arrested,” she said once she’d gotten herself settled, her coat and bag draped over the chair next to her. 

“What?” Eve shook her head a little as if that would make the sentence make some sort of sense. 

“For murder.”

“ _What?_ ”

“It’s nothing to worry about, we got him un-arrested, but it occurred to me that you might be expecting a visit from him, so I thought I should let you know not to. It seems Villanelle indulged in some extra-curricular killing while she was in London.”

“And what? She set Niko up for it?”

“Just so, yes.”

Eve opened and closed her mouth a few times before she found the right words to ask a question.

“Who?”

“Hannah? Gemma? Sorry, I really am terrible with these types of names. Just in one ear and out the other. Embarrassing, really. Especially at parties.” 

“ _Gemma?_ ” 

“Oh, you knew her then? You didn’t ask Villanelle to kill her by any chance did you?”

“What? No! Of course not.”

“You did hack someone to pieces with an axe last week, Eve. Under the circumstances it’s a reasonable question.”

“No,” Eve ground out. “I did not ask Villanelle to kill Niko’s co-worker.”

“Excellent. Dead members of the public are a little harder to explain than shadowy assassins. Anyway, I must be heading off - I just popped in to let you know.” She stood, gathering up her things.

“Wait, wait! Where’s Niko now?

“In protective custody. We gave him a new name et cetera, he should be perfectly safe.”

“Can I at least speak to him?”

Carolyn gave her a pitying look before turning to the door.

“Good night, Eve.”

  
  


After Carolyn left, Eve read Cosmo for the seventeenth time. She knew some of the articles by heart now but she made herself go extra slowly, trying to savour every tedious word. Once she had finished she tried to decide what stage of grief she was in. Twenty years of marriage and now nothing. Perhaps this was what the denial stage felt like. 

Her hospital room was on a secure floor in an undisclosed location in South London somewhere. Well, it looked like South London from her small, reinforced window. She could see terraced houses with endless conservatory extensions tacked on the back of them. She had a private bathroom, polite nurses and a security-coded door. Somehow she wasn’t surprised when she woke up from a doze to discover Villanelle coming into her room wearing a nurse’s outfit, a convincing-looking ID badge clipped to her lapel.

“Hello,” she said, her automatic politeness more integral to her than any moral centre, any faith.

“Eve,” Villanelle replied, a world of intimacy in that one word. Eve felt all of the hairs stand up on the backs of her arms. Villanelle made a show of surveying the room, walking around the bed and peering out of the window, even sticking her head into the bathroom.

“Hmmm, not bad,” she commented. “Much better than I had when you stabbed me.”

“What are you doing here?” Eve asked, as _‘how did you get in?’_ sounded ridiculous even in the privacy of her own head. 

“I came to see how my favourite person is doing, of course.” She held up a fragrant plastic bag. “I bought food.”

“I’m still angry with you.” Angry, and a little afraid. By the gleam in Villanelle’s eyes she didn’t need to say that part out loud. 

“Oh Eve, so righteous. Are you saying you don’t want any Pad Thai?”

After a week of hospital food the smell was impossible to resist. She didn’t reply, but Villanelle seemed to take her silence as permission to sit on the side of the bed, her folded knee tucked lightly under the wound on Eve’s side. She began unpacking food containers wrapped in cling film and plastic cutlery onto a side table that she dragged noisily towards her. Eve picked up her food and cutlery and dug in, hungrily.

“You killed Gemma,” she commented into her Pad Thai. It was delicious. 

“You’re welcome,” Villanelle replied, reaching out to squeeze Eve’s hand. Eve let her. It wasn’t like her husband was going to be around to give her affection any time soon, so she may as well take what she could get. 

“I forgive you, by the way,” Villanelle said as she started on her own food, her bites small and surprisingly delicate.

“You do?”

“Yes. I found a therapist and he told me some things that were helpful.” 

Eve wanted greatly to believe that Villanelle meant that she had done an appropriate Google search, then booked and paid for an appointment, but she knew without asking that that wasn’t what had happened. 

“What did he tell you?” _Before you murdered him?_

“That fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. You were afraid, but you are getting closer to the truth, to me. I need to give you some space to realise things on your own, but I will come back.”

Threat, promise, or declaration of love? Eve had no idea, and was tired of guessing. 

“Sure,” she replied. “That sounds fair.”

Villanelle narrowed her eyes and pointed at her with her fork.

“Are you mocking me?”

Eve shook her head and concentrated on her food. God, it was good. It was difficult to bear a grudge against someone who knew to ask for double peanuts on her Pad Thai. 

They ate in silence, though Eve could feel Villanelle’s eyes on her more often than not. 

“Is it good?” Villanelle asked once she’d finished her own food, leaning over to spear Eve’s last prawn and pop it into her mouth. “Mmm, it is good.”

After a pause, she added, “I can make shepherds pie you know.”

“I make a mean poached egg,” Eve offered. Villanelle grinned at her, appearing for all the world as if that would be an equal trade of skills.

“When you stop being angry with me, you can make me your mean poached egg.” 

Eve tried to find a sane answer to that before decided there wasn’t one. She put the dregs of her food on the table and watched Villanelle to see what she’d do next. She felt nothing except the satisfaction of having eaten a good meal. Even the nagging pain of her wound was quiet. 

“What happens next?” she asked, as Villanelle continued to watch her.

“What always happens,” Villanelle said, with a soft smile that looked almost real. “I will run, and you will catch me.” 

“Will you kill?”

“How will you know how to find me if I don’t?”

“Breadcrumbs?” Eve suggested. Villanelle looked at her with the absolute blankness of someone flicking through their repertoire of reactions before settling on the most appropriate. She let out a high-pitched giggle, complete with a brief lean forward—as if she were genuinely overcome with humour. 

It was difficult to be anything other than fascinated by her.

“This is lovely, we should do it again sometime,” Villanelle said as she stood and picked up the waste bin, haphazardly sweeping the detrus from their meal into it and dropping it back by the bed. 

“Do you have to go?” 

Eve thought of the magazine by her bed, she thought of her husband who was not going to come see her, possibly ever again. She would be forgiven for wanting company, even the company of the serial killer who had shot her.

“I purposefully missed all the important parts you know,” Villanelle said, gesturing at her wound.

“I know.”

Villanelle smiled sharply and sauntered the three steps back to Eve’s bed, her hands firmly in her pockets.

“I do have to go, but I can give you something to remember me by?”

“I think you did that already.”

“Something nicer.”

Eve considered the offer. It was probably no worse than the crushing loneliness of healing alone in a place where the most familiar thing was a second hand magazine. 

“OK,” she agreed. 

Villanelle, moving slowly, sat on the edge of her bed and leaned into her space. She took Eve’s wrists in an unforgiving grip, pinning them to her sides. 

“Just in case, you understand,” she murmured, her breath ghosting over Eve’s lips.

Eve shut her eyes and waited.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [Tumblr](https://xpityx.tumblr.com), but if you're just looking for writing updates then I use my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/xpityxfanfic) for those. 
> 
> All Mindfullness quotes from [this website](https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-quotes/) and the _fear is a natural reaction..._ quote is by Pema Chodron.


End file.
